


Not the Straw that Broke the Camel's Back, but the Feather

by prolixdreams



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Wings, Halloween, M/M, Road Trips, Wing Kink, Wings, pbexchangehalloween, the wings are basically the main character of this story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 03:55:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16468223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prolixdreams/pseuds/prolixdreams
Summary: Cas can't keep his wings off the Earthly plane. What's causing this, and what will it cause?





	Not the Straw that Broke the Camel's Back, but the Feather

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a_dusky_gold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_dusky_gold/gifts).



Under a brisk, blue, October sky, Dean Winchester is forced to consider (and not for the first time) the sheer speed with which everything can change.

In the tiniest fraction of a second – quicker than a breath, or a blink – a cup of coffee can become a splatter, a window can turn to shards, blood can be spilled, a routine trip can wind up a minor disaster.

A perfectly ordinary diner can be thrown into chaos.

It happens so fast that it isn’t until shortly afterward that Dean actually pieces together the order of events. There’s the way Cas’ eyes go wide and his body tenses across the table, then the distant _pop_ followed by a _rip_. Skin? Fabric? Both? He has no idea.

That sound is followed by smashing glass, clattering metal, and shouts from every direction. There’s a smell, too, of cold wind and damp soil and something else. _Outer space? No, that can’t have a smell, can it?_ For some reason, he remembers a hunt in South Carolina when a hurricane made landfall right in the middle of it, and what that storm smelled like.

Most of all, though, there’s the sight that winds up seared onto Dean’s retinas: the enormous, inky-black shapes occupying far too much space, far too suddenly.

The shapes resolve, and a single word bounces around Dean’s momentarily stunned mind:

_Wings._

He’s on his feet before he even realizes what he’s doing, all instinct, gathering Cas (and his sudden appendages) up and out of the booth, and thank god (or whatever’s still out there) for big, wide, sliding doors. It still takes some effort between the two of them to corral the wings into the space carved out by the door frame, but they manage.

As soon as Cas is safely outside the building, Dean slips back inside, slides a credit card (he can’t even remember which one it is, which name is on it. He’d rather just book it but if Sam were here he’d demand they do _something_ ) across the counter and he ignores everyone completely on the way back out. Shouting or no, no one actually makes a move to stop him leaving, so he does.

His momentum carries him across the parking lot, to where Cas is standing stock still and near-unreadable. No wings, no damage to the clothes Dean’s sure he heard (saw?) destroyed, everything is just as if none of the last five minutes ever happened, and there’s this frozen second that Dean could place almost anywhere in the past ten years. Dean is Billy Pilgrim, unstuck in time.

“You uh…” Dean swallows, taking a moment despite the approaching sirens to give Cas a once-over, finding no damage. It’s surreal. “You OK?”

“We should go,” Cas responds, and of course he’s right. Dean’s eager enough to get out of there that he doesn’t even stop to ask if this looks like a damn taxi when Cas gets in the back instead of the front.

They’ve been on the highway several minutes before Dean’s breathing is back to normal and his jaw unclenches.

“You wanna tell me what that was?” He finally asks. “You know it’s probably on youtube already.”

“Dean, pull over.” The words come out fast, much faster than Cas usually speaks. He sounds carsick.

Do angels even puke?

Trying not to find out the messy way, he swerves as urgently as he can, but evidently it’s not quick enough – Cas already has the door open and they’re still in motion when he launches himself away. Dean’s still guiding the car, he can only watch Cas vault over the barrier and stumble to his knees, scrabbling at his clothes. He just barely gets his coat off before it happens again.

The shirt and jacket shred instantly, bits of fabric fluttering away on the wind when the wings erupt – the feathers might as well be swords – and Cas looks like some kind of painting: bent in half and kneeling shirtless in the dry grass, head down like a man in prayer, enormous black wings perpendicular to his body, stretching toward the sky.

Dean’s seen a lot of shit, but this?

He actually forgets to breathe.

He can’t move, until he can, until he’s closing both car doors behind him and following Cas over the metal bar, skidding to his knees right there together with him.

Cas just breathes, and Dean breathes in time with him. In, out, in out, and finally Cas’ head comes up, and he meets Dean’s eyes.

“Cas, buddy, talk to me.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the…” Cas swallows. “The theatrics. I’m fine. I’m not in pain. I didn’t want to damage the car.”

“Dude.” Dean can’t help it: a laugh bounces around his chest and escapes his mouth whether he wants it to or not. “I could have fixed the car.”

“I know.”

“You scared the shit out of me.”

“I’m sorry,” Cas repeats.

“You’re okay?” Dean’s focus is running laps around Cas’ face, then to the wings and back again, and again, and again.

“Physically, I’m fine. But—”

“But?” Worry infuses the single word, Dean can’t keep it out.

“I can’t control them. I don’t know what’s happening.”

As if to prove it, Cas closes his eyes, and for a second, the wings blink out of existence, leaving only the cloudless sky behind them.

And then they’re back again.

Cas frowns backward at them. “They won’t _stay_.”

“Okay, you’re gonna have to explain a little, here. Stay where?”

“Loosely translated – very loosely – you might call it the… the sidereal plane. Under normal circumstances, angels on Earth hold their wings there. It’s a plane next to yours.”

“Okay,” Dean accepts, in the same way his life has so often required him to accept unusual new information all at once, swallowing it down, letting it find its place in the body of lore. “Okay. And they came over here, in the diner, and you put them back, but now they’re here again.”

“Yes,” Cas says, impatient. “That _is_ what I said.”

“I’m guessing you don’t know why?”

“If I knew, I would tell you.” It’s practically a growl.

“Okay. Okay.” Dean’s making these flat-handed gestures deep into Cas’ space. He pauses, hand in the air, and brings it down on gently Cas’ bare shoulder. “Look at me. We’re gonna fix this. We’re gonna figure it out, and we’re gonna fix it.”

Cas’ gaze drops. “They’re that bad?”

“What?” Dean can feel the line show up between his eyebrows right before understanding crashes into him: _Cas is self-conscious._ “Okay, I’m not gonna say they’re convenient, but…” Dean’s eyes rake up the length of them, and he honestly can’t stop the corner of his mouth quirking up a little. “If you’re asking my opinion, or whatever, they _look_ badass. You look like an album cover. It’s awesome, like, _literally:_ awe-some.”

Dean watches all the feathers do this thing, all of the sudden, where they sort of… fluff up. Is that good? Is that bad? He has no idea if they’re actually similar to bird wings, or if they just look like them, not that it would help, since he doesn’t know the first thing about birds anyway.

The look on Cas’ face – the tiny, secret smile – makes him think that the fluffing is a good thing. It was a good thing in The Rescuers Down Under. Maybe angel wings _are_ similar to bird wings… or the other way around, Dean reasons.

“Let’s just get back, okay?” Dean gives Cas’ shoulder a squeeze, holding that wide gaze. “Do you think we can cram these into the – oh.”

Cas frowns.

“That’s why you got in the backseat. In case you uh…” Dean mimes a wingsplosion.

“It felt unstable,” Cas explains. “And yes, if I leave them here, on the Earthly plane… your rear visibility will not be optimal, but—”

“That’s fine,” Dean cuts him off. “Trust me, I’ve driven in worse conditions than that. Let’s get you home.”

There’s a little nod from Cas, and Dean gathers up the discarded trench coat, rolling it into a more compact shape.

Dean’s the first to stand, and he extends one arm to where Cas is still on the ground. When Cas looks up, his eyes are huge and blue with open hope and relief, like Dean’s saving him from something.

There are several attempts at fitting Cas-plus-wings into the Impala before they settle on something that works. He’s on his knees, his body squeezed into the narrow floor-space behind the front seat, wings partially folded against his back. They look smaller than Dean would have imagined he could get them, but the joint (Dean’s not sure if it counts as a wrist or an elbow or what) is still pressed against one window and the longest feathers are still crushed against the opposite door.

Cas was right: the view out the back is pretty badly obscured, but Dean stands by the fact that he’s managed with worse. He’ll just have to be a little more careful than usual. Probably shouldn’t get pulled over anyway, all things considered.

 “So uh.” Dean automatically flicks his gaze to the rear-view mirror, forgetting that all he’s going to see there is a mess of black feathers. “Is it cool if we call Sam? He’s gonna find out anyway, and we’re a day out – I know you don’t sleep, but you can’t drive like this, and I’m gonna need some shuteye. Sam can do research. Hell, maybe by the time we get there, he’ll have something we can use on this.”

“That would be wise,” Cas agrees from his position below where Dean can see.

Cas’ position is clearly uncomfortable – a human would definitely be impatient, but Cas, Dean is reminded every time he looks back, is not human. He’s let himself forget that, time and time again, but right now it’s undeniable, from the feathers that fill the mirror, to the way he sits _so_ still and doesn’t seem to mind almost at all.

“Cas, I got a weird question.” Dean’s non-steering-wheel hand holds his phone, pausing before he makes the call.

“Yes?”

“Did you… heal your clothes, back at the diner?” Dean can’t suppress his curiosity.

“I restored them using my grace, yes. It seemed like the correct thing to do. I hoped that the plane would settle, and that would be the end of it.” Irritation spikes through his voice.

“Gotcha. And can you…” Dean hesitates, worried that saying it might hurt Cas, or something. “Fly?”

“Yes,” Cas starts, and then elaborates: “But not the way you’re used to. With my wings unable to remain on the sidereal plane, I would have to fly entirely on Earth, which may be… unwise.”

“Yeah, you can say that again,” Dean says under his breath – people seeing that is the last thing they need, no matter how cool the mental image is.

“Dean?” Cas ventures. “Of course, you need to sleep, but I don’t think I can enter a motel in this state. I can tuck my wings away, but I cannot guarantee they won’t re-emerge at an inopportune moment.”

“We’ll sleep in here,” Dean says with authority. “Well, I will. In the car. I’ll park somewhere quiet, where no one’ll see if you wanna get out and stretch. Sound like a plan?”

There’s a long pause, and then Cas answers: “Yes. I’m sorry to be so much tr—”

“Stop that, okay?” Dean insists. “You got nothing to apologize for, Cas. You’re family. We don’t talk like that. We just do what we gotta do.”

“Thank you.” Cas is so quiet, he’s hardly audible.

“Shut up, Cas.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

They’ve been driving east for what feels like about a thousand years. Dean’s back teeth are floating and his vision’s going blurry and really wishes they were headed west instead. Once awhile, Cas’ll adjust his wings a bit and Deal will get a flash of the sun starting to dip toward the mountains in the rear-view mirror, and he’s pretty sure it’s gonna be a killer sunset.

Then again, the freakin’ _wings_ in the backseat are pretty amazing too.

He’s almost to where he can fulfill the promise he’d made hours and hours ago, where Cas can finally uncurl. He takes the exit off I-80 somewhere around Laramie, and they head south across the border into Colorado. Once they get among the trees, Dean loses his grip on the names of things.

His mental compass and his memories stretch in front of the car like a golden thread he can follow until he finds a dirt road carved out through dense woodland. The road finally stops in a wide, dusty clearing.

“Let me just have a quick look around, make sure there’s nobody out here, okay?”

Dean doesn’t wait for an answer.

He walks around the clearing and into the woods a bit, taking a moment for a well-earned piss and listening, the way a hunter does, for threats. In this case, human threats more than monster ones, but the end result is the same.

Getting Cas out of the car proves to be almost as much of an ordeal as getting him in.

“Alright.” Dean crouches next to the open door, eye-level with where Cas is curled up on the car floor. “We’re clear. There’s no one around. Do you think it’ll be easier to go forward or backward?”

Cas lifts his head. “Forward, I think. If you open the other door, it’ll be easier to maneuver.”

Dean jogs around the car, opens the other door, and gets a face full of black feathers as Cas adjusts the angle. At first, he flinches, remembering how they tore through Cas’ clothes, but when they touch his skin, they’re _soft,_ which is confusing.

He files away the question and returns to where Cas is facing, stretching out both hands to provide support. They seem to have had the same idea: Cas takes both of Dean’s hands, and shuffles forward on his knees, wings flattened against his back, with that high joint pointed out the door.

Cas’ knees reach the edge. There’s no dignified way to do this: Dean just has to pull, and Cas has to let himself be dragged out onto the ground like a troublesome Christmas tree. The whole time, Dean keeps his hold on both of Cas’ hands.

“I’m sorry, man,” Dean lets the laugh out, but it turns out that letting it free just magnifies it, gets him laughing harder. “I’m not… I’m not laughing _at_ you, I swear, this whole thing is just…”

The tense half-scowl on Cas’ face softens, and he doesn’t quite laugh, but a little air does get forced out of his nose – close enough, Dean supposes.

Their hands don’t part until Cas is fully to his feet, and even a few seconds after that. Cas is the first to let go, running his hands through his hair without worrying about the tousled mess left behind, and leaving Dean’s arms strangely weightless for just a second before he’s _completely_ distracted by the _stretching._  

_The stretching._

Cas’ unclothed shoulders, rolling backward. His hands, clasping behind his back beneath the place where his wings meet his body. The lines of his neck shifting as he twists in one direction, and then the other. It’s familiar. Dean’s seen this before, this series of movements, but it takes him a moment to figure out when.

Of course, in Zachariah’s shitworld, Cas hadn’t had wings anymore – wings reaching back and back, the tips brushing against the trunks of trees.

He’d also been wearing a shirt, that time.

“I didn’t uh…” Dean swallows. He can’t take his eyes away. He should, some inner timer of how long he can look like this has completely timed out and it’s definitely crossing over into weird, but he just can’t. “Since when do angels stretch?”

“Oh.” Cas seems almost embarrassed for a second, but it fades quickly, and when he looks down and does that little smile, Dean’s got that feeling again, like in the parking lot, where he has to remind himself that the past, both the real one and the fake one, has come and gone. Cas suggests: “I think if they tried it, they’d like it.”

“Right,” Dean acknowledges after maybe a beat too long – it takes too much brainpower to watch Cas’ wings arc forward in what seems like a long, slow, careful flap, before settling in to a loosely folded position at his back. “Yeah. Well. Least you don’t have to worry about gettin’ cold.”

Dean finally breaks free of his stretching-angel-induced trance long enough to go get a much-needed beer from where he’d had to stash them in the trunk to make room for Cas. His life, his djinn life, his hell life, his Dean Smith life, his other-2014 life—it’s just too many memories for one brain that he’s not even sure was worth that much to begin with.

“Dean, your phone.” Cas’ eyes are fixed on the passenger seat where Dean’s phone is flashing and buzzing quietly.

Dean scrambles around, already knowing who it’s gonna be.

“Sammy. Finally. Tell me you got some answers – uh, wait, here, let me put you on speaker and give you a look at what we’re working with here—” Dean hits the button so they’re on video, with the back camera active and transmitting video of Cas in all his Led-Zeppelin-Icarus glory.

Cas clinically shuffles one wing out to the side a little, followed by the other, like he’s giving a demonstration.

“Damn.” Sam’s voice comes through tinny but clear on speaker. “They’re way cooler than Lu—”

Both wings snap shut, even though Sam did _technically_ stop just short of putting his foot in his mouth. Actually, Dean’s got no idea whether that’s even a thing, so his eyes are _trained_ on Cas, searching for intel on what kind of reaction a comment like that gets. He does pick up on something: pride, mixed with shock, and all crushed under the bootheel of ingrained, practiced stoicism.

“Anyway,” Sam coughs and presses on. “I’m pretty sure, uh… it’s Halloween.”

“Yeah, Happy Halloween, Sammy. And?” Dean hits the button to switch to the front camera.

“No, I mean, the…” Sam, front camera broadcasting his gesture toward his own back. “You can’t put your wings in the other world, right?”

“The sidereal plane.” Cas draws nearer to the phone, so he can helpfully supply vocabulary.

“That. Yeah. And get this, I’ve been in contact with hunters across the country, they’re seeing a huge influx of ghosts, for one thing, especially newly dead ghosts, and there’s all kinds of Fae, wisps especially, in places they almost never show up.”

“Get to the punchline.” Dean frowns.

“Well, it’s all other planes. And the closer we’ve gotten to Halloween, to today, the worse it seems like it’s getting. You remember the whole thing with Samhain, right? The walls between the planes get thin at this time of year. What if they’re just… thin _ner_ than most years? So thin they can’t _hold_ the kinds of things that go back and forth under normal circumstances?”

“It’s good news,” Cas says, looking a little unburdened. “We should look into why that might be, in case it’s something that needs to be addressed – but it makes sense, and if it _is_ that, then it’s… self-limiting.”

“Right,” Sam agrees. “Should be back to normal by morning, maybe a little after midnight if we’re lucky. You might just need to wait it out.”

“Yeah, I was gonna get some shuteye anyway.”

They agree to keep one another posted if anything changes, and the phone winds up tossed back on the seat where it came from.

Where was he? Right: alcohol.

Dean only offers the beer to be polite, he doesn’t expect Cas to say yes, but he does, and they wind up making their way through pretty much the entire cooler, sitting on the front of the car, absent anywhere else to sit that would accommodate the whole wing situation. The right one is bent at an odd angle, dangling off the right side of the car, and the left one is pulled back a little, resting across the car just beneath the windshield and very close behind where Dean sits on the left side of the hood.

He’s _painfully_ aware of it, radiating warmth just as much as the car still is.

Do angels care if you touch the wings? Is that a thing? Cas had let him manipulate them a little before, to help him in and out of the car, but… Dean wants to touch them _differently_.

 “What does it feel like, for you?” Dean finally asks. Not the question he really _wants_ to ask, but just adjacent to it.

“if I do nothing to prevent it, the alcohol will enter the body’s bloodstream and have its ordinary effect. That time, after your encounter with Joshua, I couldn’t stop… stopping it. Like a reflex, cleansing the vessel of poison, the same way you’d cough if there was dust in your throat. It took…” Cas stops, looks down at the bottle, and the smallest hint of a chuckle escapes. “I don’t remember. It was a lot, before I was able to hold that reflex back, but I didn’t give up, did I?”

“I meant the wings, being on Earth,” Dean clarifies, though if he’s honest, that was also pleasantly informative. “Being stuck here.”

“Oh. That.” They sort of rustle, as if responding to being addressed. “Heavy. Unwieldy, like any other muscle that’s not accustomed to use. We normally fly in the sidereal plane, where it’s easy. Gravity isn’t a problem there. We only bring them over for displays of dominance, anymore. A long time ago, angels flew on Earth for any number of reasons, but it’s been… ages.”

“Why’d you stop?”

“I don’t remember,” Cas says, too softly. “I guess Naomi must have…”

Dean chuckles dryly, picking up where Cas trailed off. “You haven’t got enough memories, I was just thinking how I had too many… we’re right off the island of misfit toys.”

He tilts back a little, soaking in the stars emerging in the open patch of sky, trying not to focus on the feathers inches away.

“Dean,” Cas’ voice sounds suddenly solemn, weighed down by something. “You _can_ touch them, if you like.”

“Hey, I—”

“I do try not to listen, Dean, but you’re thinking _very_ loudly.”

Thank whatever for the cool night air of nearly-November. Dean takes a long breath in, and then lets it out, sending with it some of the heat that’s infusing his body. Slowly, gingerly, he sets his drink on the car next to him.

Dean’s got a lot of guidelines, rules he follows like he’s a train on a track, no differently than he follows the rules of hunting – things passed down and things learned by rough experience to keep all the walls and illusions intact – the ways and places and number of seconds that you touch or pat or hold another ostensibly straight man to prevent anyone noticing that you’re different, somehow.

For awhile now, he’s known he doesn’t need them anymore, that hunters aren’t what they used to be, that his father isn’t watching, that he’s got enough social clout as well as the muscle to back it up. He can do as he pleases.

Old habits die hard, though.

There are no rules for this, which somehow makes it easier and harder all at the same time.

The wing behind his back drifts forward until it’s touching his shoulders, warm like a blanket thrown over him, and he turns toward Cas, holding his gaze to check for some sort of reaction – positive, negative, he’s ready for anything as he reaches for the leading edge of that wing and lays his hand there.

He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and turns to look at where his hand has settled. The wing is doing that _fluff_ thing again, where all the feathers rise up just a little.

“How?” Dean whispers, sort of by accident.

Cas’ head tilts a few degrees, and his eyes narrow, a question without words. _What do you mean, how?_

“Before… the clothes – they were _shredded._ I figured it’d be like knives, but…” Dean runs his hand down the width of the wing, from the leading edge to the trailing edge, where the wing meets the roof of the car. “It’s so _soft_. I don’t understand.”

Dean glances back up to Cas’ face as he repeats the motion, both out of a desire to feel that again and to see the reaction this time. He’s not disappointed: Cas’ lashes flutter out of his control for just a fraction of a second, which is all it takes to make Dean suddenly feel like there’s too much blood in his body.

Fuck it. Dean is gone. He’s fucking gone on an angel of the lord and he can’t even pretend anymore that he’s not as gone as any person has ever been, and maybe even gone-er than that. Absolutely fuck all rules and also fuck going even one more day hiding his complete and utter gone-ness.

The first time he’d _truly_ let himself peer over this cliff, they’d been in purgatory, but he hadn’t quite managed to make the leap. The next time, he’d been dropping a human Cas off for what he'd thought was a date. It had just accelerated from there, time and again, Dean’s taken a run at the edge and skidded to a halt at the last moment.

At _this_ moment, there's nothing stopping him but his own self-defeating bullshit, the voice in his head saying  _you've got it wrong, he can't feel that way, you don't deserve this, it'll never work--_

Nope. Not doing this. This is what always gets him in trouble. Time to try something different. 

Through this entire train of thought, Cas, for his part, looks as placid and patient as a distant star. He’s so patient Dean almost wants to punch him. Instead, he follows Cas' gaze as it moves to where Dean’s hand is still in contact with feathers. He shifts them a little, so there’s movement against Dean’s skin.

“They can’t hurt you.” Cas explains, as if that explains everything.

And maybe it does, but with Cas, king of the literal, Dean can't  _assume._ No matter how much he hates to admit it, he's going to have to do what Sam's always pushing him to do and use his words. 

"Alright. I gotta ask. Cards on the table, okay? I'm feeling like… like you're saying that they reason they can't hurt me is..." He can't quite get the words out. "Okay, let me try this again. Tell me if I'm crazy, here. This? Us?" He gestures at the space between them. "Seems like it's kind of... critical mass, and I'm scared I'm about to fuck up one of the only good things --maybe the best thing-- that's ever happened to me. When you were human, I thought, for a minute, maybe, but... I don't know a damn thing about how angels do this, or what this feels like for you, or what you'd even want from--"

"You're right," Cas interjects, impatient at last. "They can't hurt you because I love you."

There's a long moment where Dean completely forget to let the air out of his lungs, and he imagines that the expression frozen on his face is probably not the most flattering. 

"Okay. Okay. Um." Dean exhales, swallows. "I'm gonna ask you a question, and you gotta know it's totally cool for you to say no."

Cas nods. 

"Can I kiss you?" Dean leaps completely off the cliff and into thin air. 

"I'd like that." Cas’ face has just the ghost of a smile, but his feathers are a lot more expressive: they're as fluffed as Dean has seen so far, and he's already figuring out what that means. 

So the conversation had been a little less smooth than Dean had pictured – and he’s not going to waste time pretending he’s never pictured it – but he’s strangely fine with it. He leaped, and Cas caught him, and that’s what matters.  

Dean reaches for the leading edge of Cas’ wing, just next to the shoulder, and uses that to tug himself closer still, until their lips meet. It’s soft and unsure at first, even chaste, but then Dean feels Cas’ smile into the kiss and he lets himself hum against Cas’ mouth in answer.

He shouldn’t be surprised when Cas’ tongue runs across his bottom lip, but he is, he’s completely taken off guard and when he draws that startled breath, Cas takes it one step further and takes Dean’s lower lip between his own.

As they kiss, all Dean can think is _fuck_ , Cas shouldn’t be so good at this, Dean had always imagined he’d be the one in that role, but he’s getting absolutely _schooled._

It takes a second for Dean to get his bearings but as soon as he does, he’s replying in kind, echoing Cas’ movements but adding little twists of his own, reveling in the little reactions he catches in their shared breath.

Dean’s seized by a very brief flash of anger at himself. Why the _fuck_ did this take so long?

He does a little maneuvering – a hand here, a knee there – and Cas cooperates pliantly until he’s laid out on his back on the hood, wings pressed against the windshield, and Dean is kneeling over him, right where he’d like to be kneeling, though with considerably more layers of fabric in the way than he’d prefer.

For a moment, he’d thought there was too much of a chill in the air for him to match Cas’ toplessness, but the sight of Cas’ heartbeat against his sternum (not to mention the feeling of the hard line pressing against Dean through Cas’ black slacks) is leaving Dean quite warm, thank you very much.

Dean wriggles out of one layer, then the next, taking his time and enjoying Cas’ rapt attention. When he’s finally bared from the waist up, Dean leans forward, down and down until they’re skin on skin.

He’s wanted to feel this for so long.

Their mouths come together once more, lazy and wet, and Dean’s starts to drift off to one side, across rough stubble and down to Cas’ neck.

Now _that_ gets a reaction. He’d worried – he’d wondered what angels like, if it’s anything like what he’s used to, but he licks his way from pulse point to collarbone and Cas’ wings come up off the car and wrap around him like a great black cocoon of feathers.

“ _Dean—”_

He only laughs against Cas’ skin, reaches up, and grasps a handful of feathers.

_“Dean, that feels—”_

Dean shifts his weight just a little way, and cold air slips between them. He drags his teeth up to Cas’ ear and murmurs, “too bad we’ve got all these clothes on.”

Cas absolutely _growls_ , a sound that rattles through both of them. His hand lands on the waistband of Dean’s jeans, grasps them tightly, and just like that, all of the fabric is gone– they’re both naked beneath the trees and the sky, all skin and heat.

“Better?” Cas’ voice is so rough it’s practically infrasound.

“Much,” Dean whispers, dragging his teeth over Cas’ earlobe. Slowly, word by word, he adds: “You gotta tell me how you’re feeling. I don’t know what angels like. What you like. Tell me what you want.”

Cas’ hands sweep across Dean’s skin like they can’t decide where to touch, leaving goosebumps in their wake, and with a greed that Dean’s never heard before, he says, “Everything. I want everything.”

“Fuck, I want to give you everything.” Dean shifts his hips just _so_ , and as their cocks line up together, both of them let out a gasp, and then a laugh, practically in sync.

They cover one another’s mouths in a kiss that starts playful and turns desperate fast.

It’s Dean that grinds against Cas first, but it’s also Dean that _keens_ in reaction to the feeling. Cas is an extremely quick study, slipping one hand between their bodies to wrap loosely around both of them.

“Where’d you learn that?” Dean manages, between gulps of air.

Cas’ other hand slides up behind Dean’s head and pulls, rough and powerful, until Dean’s ear is level with Cas’ mouth and he’s overwhelmed with that incredible wing smell. The air around them seems to crackle when he rasps, “I have been alive longer than you can conceive of, and I have likely witnessed every sexual act that humanity has ever devised. Consider that.”

Well, shit. Dean can’t exactly _not_ consider that _now_ , can he?

He slides his cock against Cas’, thrusting into Cas’ fist, wondering how it got so smooth, so slick.

Cas reads his mind, which Dean usually dislikes but right now it’s just _insanely hot,_ and reminds in a gruff whisper: “Angel, remember?”

“Fuck, Cas—”

“That is the idea, more or less.”

The nose Dean makes is somewhere between a laugh and a moan, and Dean’s natural competitiveness blossoms: he reaches for a fistful of feathers just below the leading edge, digs his fingers in, and _drags_ his hand roughly down.

It’s a mirror of what he did before, but much rougher and needier, and Cas’ reaction is all the stronger for it. He does it again, and this time he’s pretty sure that Cas is loud enough to startle the birds from the trees.

Together, they get completely lost in the rhythm, Cas’ hand moving over them as they seek desperate friction against one another, his wings stuttering – beating against the car and curling around them and when Dean can’t grasp them for all their frantic movement, he simply wraps one arm beneath Cas and finds the place where they meet his back instead, to much the same effect.

They don’t find release at quite the same moment, but later, Dean will struggle to remember who was first.

Cas is unlike other angels in a thousand ways, and one of those is that he’s never been one for the flourishes that other angels seem to enjoy. He doesn’t snap his fingers, or anything like that – when he renders them both clean, it simply _happens._

All at once, the strength and direction that Dean had felt moments ago drains away, and is replaced by a calm drowsiness. He slides off the car and glances around, cold now, and hardly opens his mouth to consider where Cas might have sent his clothes before he realizes he’s wearing them again.

When he turns back, there’s Cas, fully dressed and standing in front of the car. Wherever his wings are (the sidereal plane, Dean supposes) they aren’t here.

Dean Winchester comes unstuck in time once more.

That happened. That wasn’t a fever dream or a fantasy, it really happened.

Right?

“Cas? What happened to uh…” Dean gestures behind Cas, where the wings so recently were.

“It’s well past midnight. The planes have returned to normal,” Cas says.

“Right.” Dean’s still a little short of breath. “Okay. How long did you know you could do that?”

“You should rest,” Cas points out, ignoring the question. With a ghost of a smirk, he adds: “Or I suppose, _I_ could drive tomorrow.”

“Is that a threat?” Dean quips.

“If that helps.”

Dean’s ready to argue, but the reality is that Cas is right. He was tired before, and he’s exhausted now, the weight of it tugging at his limbs like increased gravity.

He climbs into the back seat and assumes the curled shape he always does when he sleeps in the car. Cas, somewhat to Dean’s surprise, positions himself long-wise in the front, sitting up against the door.

“Cas?” Dean says, and that’s all it takes to get his full attention. “Don’t go far, yeah?”

“I’ll stay with you,” Cas promises.

Dean’s already drifting off when he actually admits, out loud, that he likes the sound of that.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Eventually, the sun becomes too bright to ignore. It’s hard for Dean to convince himself to stir, though – especially with the soft, warm blanket keeping off the morning chill.

Hang on.

He hadn’t gone to sleep with a blanket.

That’s a good enough reason for Dean to open his eyes and assess the situation – the first thing he realizes that his feet are dangling off the edge of the seat, and the car door is open. The next is that the “blanket” he’d been so pleased with is, in fact, a mass of shiny black feathers. Cas’ wing.

As he draws himself to a sitting position, the wing disappears entirely with a soft rustle.

“Cas?” Dean asks Cas is no longer stretched out in the front seat, but rather keeling quietly next to the open door, and he rises to his feet to give Dean room to get out.

“You were cold.” Cas explains.

“So uh… does this mean we’ll be seeing a bit more of those?” Dean tries to keep the hope out of his voice, but it’s entirely impossible – after all, that _has_ to count as the happiest Halloween that Dean can remember, despite how it started.

“Anytime,” Cas says. He smiles then, a real smile, and it warms Dean all over again.

 

 


End file.
